When we tell people we require five verified testimonials per nomination, the most common follow-up is some version of: “so it’s basically Glassdoor for managers?” It isn’t. The difference matters. And it is structural, not cosmetic.
The dominant mode of workplace praise on the internet is a free-text testimonial. Somebody writes a paragraph. Then somebody else writes another paragraph. The reader compares vibes. If you’ve ever read more than a few of these, you know the failure mode: every paragraph sounds the same. “An incredible leader.” “A brilliant mind.” “The best boss I ever had.” None of it tells you anything.
If every testimonial reads as a five-star review, you cannot tell who is excellent. You can only tell who is popular.
That is why our nomination process is built around a structured form, not a free-text box. Every testifier completes the same questionnaire. Same identity fields. Same scored statements on a 1-to-5 scale. Same prompts for written evidence. Same closing consent block. We do this for three concrete reasons.
One: comparison becomes possible. When five testifiers all score “treats people with respect under pressure” — and they do it on the same scale — we can look at the median, the range, and the outliers. A nominee who gets four 5s and one 2 from a former direct report is a much more interesting file than a nominee who gets five 4s from a similar cohort. Structured data lets the jury see things that free-text hides.
Two: fraud becomes detectable. A coordinated nomination — five people who agreed beforehand on what to write — produces unmistakable signals in the data. Suspiciously similar word choices in the written prompts. Identical scoring patterns across statements that should produce variance. Testimonials that mention the same anecdote in the same order. We have built our review pipeline around catching this.
Three: the jury can focus on the right things. Reading a hundred free-text paragraphs is exhausting and unreliable. Reading a hundred structured files, sorted by category, with comparable evidence, is doable. The jury’s time goes where it should: judging the quality of the work and the impact on the people, not parsing prose.
The form is also the place where we ask the question that does most of the work. It sounds simple: “Describe one moment when this person stood out — 50 to 150 words.” That single prompt produces more signal than any other field. A generic nomination cannot answer it. A real one can. Try it yourself, mentally, for the best manager you have ever had. You will find that the answer is specific, vivid, and probably surprised you. Now imagine reading five of those answers about the same person, from five different people who worked with them in different ways. That is what a winning file looks like. We don’t ask testifiers to be eloquent. We ask them to be specific. That is the standard. And it is the standard the jury holds the